Lufia and the Fortress of Doom

I'll be completely honest here. This game sucks. It is terribly balanced and poorly designed.

Combat is often incredibly unpredictable because character turns work on speed stat similar to Final Fantasy's ATB system (without real time waiting, it orders the turns based on speed I assume) except the game does not tell you any sort of information of when a character's turn is coming up. Additionally, a lot of actions have a wait time since they're selected before they're actually performed. But the game does not tell you anything regarding this making it impossible to tell when you'll actually get a spell or attack off (yes regular attacks also have a wait time).

In combat, whenever you kill an enemy and other party members are still targeting it, they just attack the blank space and waste their turn. Same with items and spells on characters who are dead but that's not as jarring. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if it weren't for the fact that the game is insanely grindy so this mechanic makes grinding a huge chore. I know it's grindy because I fought every battle I came across and I was still 7-10 levels below the recommended one for bosses. Despite grinding for money for equipment whenever new equipment was available. And the encounter rate is so ridiculous you’re gonna want to use the reduce encounter rate item 24/7.

The music is bad. The tracks that aren't grating are extremely boring and repetitive, and the ones that are grating are sooo grating I'd put them on the same level as the Fly Pudding track from Breath of Fire II. Only track I genuinely enjoyed was the final dungeon!

Walking speed in dungeons is abysmal. There are item chests everywhere that make you wanna go get them but the items in most of the treasure chests are just simple potions and rarely have good equipment or items besides the Old Cave. It felt like a waste when I walked through a corridor for a simple potion when the encounter rate is so high and the walking speed is so slow. Lower level enemies flee from you sometimes though so it's a slightly less annoying thing.

The characters are extremely boring. The main character has no personality outside of being Maxim's descendant and being a typical boy. Lufia is boring and has no personality outside of being a jealous girl in love with the main character. Aguro has no character. Period. He's kind of mean I guess but the dialogue is so bland it's impossible to get a grasp on what he's even supposed to be. Jerin is boring and kinda sucks as a party member when you first get her. She gets better later but is still not a character at all.

Also overworld music resets every time you get in an encounter and dungeon music resets every time you go up or down stairs. And after encounters. Escape item/spell works in caves but not in towers. Why?

One final thing that bothered me is how hard it is to find the fortress of doom right at the end. It's so small and there's no world map so you're just wandering around for a while trying to find it.

The plot is not bad but it's also not *good*. It's a typical story with not much to say. I will say the stuff with Lufia was entertaining and the ending was very sweet. I really did love the ending genuinely. The dungeon design is fine. Not as good as the second game which incorporates puzzles though.

I hate this game. Please just skip to Lufia 2 instead. It's an actually good game fit for human consumption.